Daily Archives: August 19, 2011

One issue where the unions may have been right all along is the thorny question of the public finance initiative – which they raised concerns about a decade ago. Unions including Unison and the GMB have been arguing for years that PFI is simply more expensive than conventionally-financed schemes. (They also have an often kneejerk hostility to private companies in the public sector per se).

The coalition signalled last year that it believed the system was “discredited” and “a ploy to keep expensive projects off the balance sheet”. Read more

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FT journalists live blog during key events as the UK prepares to leave the European Union

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Jim Pickard is the FT's chief political correspondent, having joined the lobby team in January 2008. He has been at the FT since 1999 as a regional correspondent, assistant UK news editor and property correspondent.

Kate Allen is a political correspondent for the FT. She joined the lobby team in October 2015, after two years as the FT's property correspondent. She previously spent a decade covering housing on various business magazines.